Rousseau’s adjudication of the savage propels him to meditate a riddle that has puzzled humanity through out recorded history, from the Tower of Babel to the formulation of philological discourse. A central problematic yielding little in the way of positivism, the origin of language rather represents a chronic deliberation reflective of historical conditions ordaining the arbiter's vocabulary.
Weighing these matters upon the “scales of impartiality,” Rousseau refutes the ability to explain man’s natural state with the language of civil society; nonetheless, he situates the noble savage with characteristically modern capacities and affects (Rousseau 98). An animal imbued with a soul and a freewill that may guide his actions against the statutes of natural order, Rousseau nostalgically gazes upon a distinctly modern bower erected through apprehension of racial Others.
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